PARSLEY FAMILY 



Sea Holly is a misnomer. One species, Eryngium maritimum, 

 growing on English beaches, attracted attention, and since its 



leaves were spiny, was named 

 Sea Holly. This name became, 

 in time, fixed upon the genus. 



Blue Thistle is not much bet- 

 ter, as the plant is not a thistle 

 and but a small section of the 

 genus is blue. Star Thistle is 

 more appropriate, but Eryngium 

 is best of aU, for it at least does 

 not mislead, since nobody knows 

 what it means. 



The cultivated members of the 

 group are principally mountain 

 species, natives of the high Alps, 

 the Pyrenees, and the Spanish 

 Sierras. 



The determining factor which 

 has brought them from their 

 wild homes into the garden is the wonderful tide of blue color 

 which surges up and through and over the plant, so that not only 

 flower and bracts, but stems and leaves are blue. 



Amethystine Eryngium, Eryngium amethystium, which was 

 brought from the southern Alps into England fully two hundred 

 years ago, is the species longest in cultivation. The plant has 

 never achieved popularity because its extreme rigidity and metallic 

 lustre produce so marked a contrast to softer t)rpes of vegetation as 

 to be irreconcilable within the narrow limits of a garden. It must, 

 however, have value in any large scheme of landscape coloring. 

 The Eryngiums are good inhabitants of poor sandy soils, for 

 the stout roots go down straight and deep and enable their owners 

 to withstand drought. 



Of the several species in cultivation, Eryngium Bowghti, a 

 dwarf form, is bushy and well set up and might be valuable as 

 a border plant. 



332 



Amethystine Eryngium. Eryngimn 



